Dev Letter - Sound Improvement Plan Check up

Last August, the PUBG sound team announced a sound improvement plan for the second half of 2019. We wanted to give you an update on what’s been done so far as well as what still needs to be worked on.

First off, we adjusted the volume of sound effects such as “flies” which was high on the list of most inconvenient sounds. We also dealt with “red zone”, “vehicle engine” and “wave” sounds which were louder than necessary and offered more of a distraction than information.

Conversely, the “Footstep Sound Rebalance,” which was an attempt to improve auditory information, unfortunately included some unintended side effects and we had no choice but to roll back those changes.

The PUBG Dev Team fully understands the great impact and importance of sound in PUBG and wants to make sure we approach this delicate but important feature of the game much more carefully, which unfortunately means a slight delay on a few of the sound elements planned by the end of the year, including our fix for the rolled-back Footstep Sound Rebalance.

[ Postponed items ]

Our view that the audible range and sound drop-off distance of footsteps require improvement has not changed. However, as you can see from the image below, our 1st rebalance had an area that caused problems while expressing a sense of distance. We understand something like this needs to be approached very carefully to preserve the PUBG gameplay experience, and therefore we are currently working on the rebalancing with deeper analysis.

Our goal is to provide clear and informative soundplay without the need for excessive volume adjustment and without harming overall gameplay. Moreover, we promise to do our best to ensure that cases like the previous release and rollback do not reoccur by improving our verification process before releasing to players.

While we cannot give an exact schedule for these delayed improvements at this moment, our goal is to have all these issues addressed by early 2020. We agree that we can do better in regards to sound and are actively working towards that goal. Thank you for your patience and we’ll be sure to release additional information when we’re ready to roll these improvements out.